4/4/10

Darin Klein & Friends Present: Suzanne Wright + Women Together... Fantastic! (WTF!)

Particle Accelerator installation view

Westminster Panties installation view

Shuttle Launch poster

fierce pussy installation view

Catherine Lord

Math Bass

Dawn Kasper

The crowd

April 3
Women Together... Fantastic! (WTF!)
With Math Bass + fierce pussy
+ Dawn Kasper + Catherine Lord

Suzanne installed all new work in the studio for this salon style gathering that proved to be both educational and entertaining. The installation was impressive and focused, highlighting the large drawings Particle Accelerator and Westminster Panties along with a series of smaller, framed drawings. Also on view were the sculpture Double Transmission and a poster-sized reproduction of her Shuttle Launch collage. To top it all off, the outer walls of the restroom were wallpapered with ephemera from the fierce pussy collective, on top of which was hanging Suzanne’s sculpture Transtar (Orange).

The crowd gathered and the anticipation for the events built. Around 9pm, Catherine Lord took the “stage” (in this case, Math’s scooter) and read a moving passage from King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes. Next came Math, who repositioned the scooter to the middle of the studio, hooked up a computer and sound-system in the back basket, donned an helmet (safety first!) and performed a single, ominously utopian song accompanied by recorded music and the sound of the scooter’s motor. Rounding out the night was Dawn Kasper in a performance that involved an array of props, masks, hats, wigs and musical instruments. What transpired was part confessional monologue (to paraphrase: “It seemed like a good idea to glue this ass to this soy milk container, but now I’m not so sure”) and part absurd kindergarten storytime (a passage from a childrens book chronicling the life of a sausage who cooks himself).

Math Bass has recorded and toured as one half of the performance duo Marriage, contributed to the journal LTTR and has been featured in exhibitions including Shared Women at LACE in Los Angeles and The Way That We Rhyme at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Having moved to LA to collaborate with feminist inventors, Math most recently blew our minds with amazing gastronomical skills as one half of International Brunch.

Suzanne Wright and her fierce pussy co-conspirators have wheatpasted their posters and printed and distributed stickers and t-shirts throughout New York City. Other projects include re-designing the bathroom at the Gay and Lesbian Center, a greeting card campaign directed against the policies of Cardinal O’Connor and Senator D’Amato, and a moving billboard/truck. For Gay Pride 1991, fierce pussy re-named streets along the parade route after prominent lesbian heroines using stencils and spray-paint. In 2008, Printed Matter released an eponymous book of fierce pussy posters, many of which were on view tonight.
printedmatter.org

Dawn Kasper
is a Los Angeles based performance and mixed media artist who describes her work ethic as one that ”houses a need for process, systems and the blurring of art and life.” She has performed and exhibited at venues including Anna Helwing, Circus of Books, The Company, J. Paul Getty Museum, LACMA, Raid Projects and Statler Waldorf in Los Angeles; Art Positions: Art Basel in Miami Beach; Art in General in New York City; and Migros Museum fur Genenwartskunst in Zurich.
dawnkasper.com

Catherine Lord
is a writer, artist, and curator whose work addresses queer theory, feminism, cultural politics, and colonialism. She is the author of The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation (University of Texas Press, 2004) and her critical essays and her fiction have been published in numerous journals and catalogues. She is Professor of Studio Art at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, UC Irvine.
studioart.arts.uci.edu

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